I’m 20 years out of the defense industry, but the problem has always been the procurement system, which involves a specification for the hardware being procured and a bidding process. Items have a detailed specification. For many items, you may have a commercial product that would do the job fine, but it doesn’t meet the form factor specified. Or the item is required to meet MIL specs and the commercial supplier is not set up to prove that his device could meet those specs. Famous anecdotes like the 700 dollar hammer fail to take into account that an item that was initially bought in large quantity is expensive if you buy a small quantity and the supplier has to tool a factory to make 20 pieces.
I’m sure some defense firms talk buyers into over-spec’ing but the bigger problem is when buyers do it on their own. If you require a coffee maker to be able to function over the full MIL temp range of -55 to +125C in the absence of cabin pressure, it will cost you a lot of money. Someone has to decide to make an exception to exempt the item from meeting the spec and get approval for that exemption from an engineer. Invoking MIL spec often involves just checking a box. This is less hassle for the buyer.
There is a tendency, especially on the left to demonize the defense industry. The people I worked with just wanted to supply the best products possible.
Biggest load of Horse Apples I have ever heard... Our MIC is the biggest bunch of Crooks in the World... Period...
Thank you. Real world experiences put us on the same page (see my post #3)
Here is an example that bothered me - and still does:
On a particular thing we (the military) wanted to buy, the software had a flaw. I brought it up in a meeting. Meanwhile, one of the guys I worked with talked with a civilian friend working there and it turned out that problem was in software he worked on. The friend fixed it on the spot.
In the meeting, the contractor told us it would take 6 months to fix and would run into millions. My guy told him it was already fixed.
There was an explosion. But in the end, it WAS already fixed. The software guy? He was good enough not to lose his job, but he was told to NEVER talk to anyone testing the equipment again.
Which may be why I sometimes got a phone call...”You don’t know me or know who I am, but I just saw X happening.”
The people working for that major contractor were almost all wonderful patriots. The people running it? I’d have put them in prison if the law allowed.